The oil and gas industry desires to efficiently obtain and process hydrocarbons into desired products. Typically, hydrocarbon resources are located in remote locations, which may not have the utilities available to process the hydrocarbons into desired products. As a result, the hydrocarbons have to be transported via ship or other means to a processing facility, such as a refinery, which can convert the hydrocarbons into the desired products. As such, the transport of the hydrocarbons may involve transporting the hydrocarbons long distances, introducing additional delays and costs in handling the hydrocarbons, along with other inefficiencies.
Once transported to a refinery, different processes are applied to the hydrocarbons to convert them into different products. These processes generally involve the use of thermal changes and/or pressure changes to separate the hydrocarbons in various stages. In particular, the processing may be performed in an oil refinery, which converts or separates the hydrocarbons (e.g., crude oil) into different streams, such as gases, light naphtha, heavy naphtha, kerosene, diesel, atmospheric gas oil, asphalt, petroleum coke and heavy hydrocarbons. Similarly, if the processing is performed in a natural gas refinery, the natural gas may be converted into industrial fuel gas, ethane, propane, butanes and pentanes.
In conventional oil refineries, different units separate the hydrocarbons into the desired products. These units may include an atmospheric distillation unit, a vacuum distillation unit, a delayed coker, a hydrotreater, a merox treater, an isomerization unit, a catalytic reformer, a fluid catalytic cracker, an amine treater, a hydrocracker, and a steam cracker. Typically, the hydrocarbon feeds are passed through the atmospheric distillation unit to divide the hydrocarbons (e.g., crude oil) into gases, naphtha (e.g., light naphtha and heavy naphtha), kerosene/jet fuel, diesel oil, atmospheric gas oil and atmospheric resid or bottoms. As an example, the volume amounts of these products may be gases of 5 weight percent (wt %), naphtha of 20 wt % to 30 wt %, kerosene/jet fuel 5 wt % to 20 wt %, diesel oil of 15 wt % to 20 wt %, atmospheric gas oil of 20 wt % to 30 wt %, and atmospheric resid or bottoms of 5 wt % to 20 wt %. Each of the different percentages are a specific portion of the hydrocarbon feed. The amount of these different products may vary based on the different crude oil provided for processing in the system. Some conventional refineries may also include a vacuum distillation unit, a hydrotreater, a merox treater, a delayed coker, a fluid catalytic cracker and a hydrocracker, which are used to further separate products, such as light vacuum gas oil, heavy vacuum gas oil and vacuum residuum. The amount of these different products may vary based on the different crude oil provided for processing in the system.
Once the hydrocarbons have been separated, pyrolysis units are typically used to further process certain of the hydrocarbon feeds, such as naphtha, to produce olefins, which are the basic building blocks for other petrochemical products. As a specific example, a pyrolysis unit may be a steam cracking furnace that has two main sections: a convection section and a radiant section. The feed typically enters the convection section of the furnace where it is heated and mixed by direct contact with steam. The vaporized feed and steam mixture is then introduced into the radiant section where the cracking takes place. The resulting products leave the pyrolysis unit as effluent for further downstream processing.
Typical olefin systems receive and process a hydrocarbon feedstock, as noted above, to maximize the production of various products. While some of the initial feedstock is utilized for fuel for the process equipment within the refinery, the typical configurations attempt to minimize the amount of process fuel consumed to maximize the product yields. That is, existing processes burn fuel including fuel gas, fuel oil, crude oil in a boiler to generate steam, and use the steam with a turbine to generate power. As such, typical systems are configured to minimize the amount of the feedstock that is utilized for fuel to support the process.
What is needed is a method for processing hydrocarbons in a manner that provides the co-production of olefins and electric power because the demand for these products is growing faster than the demand for refinery fuel products. In particular, it may be desirable to construct a facility that processes hydrocarbons in more efficient manner, which produces electric power and desalinated water along with specific desired products.